Beautiful, expansive track in a middle-class neighborhood north of the city center of Detroit. You can throw many full drives and approaches to your heart's content if you are in that camp. I love a parkland course! There are two tees and one basket per hole. It's a busy course, yet not crowded. At least, not yet. I think also the expansiveness will keep people from running over one another. No. 18 is an excellent closing hole if your play in the regular order. Number 6 is an excellent closing hole if you play 7 through 18 and then 1 through 6 (more on that later).

There are no benches anywhere (at least, not yet). You may consider bringing a folding stool or Zuca cart. Many of the short tees have no full pad yet (just natural tees). It's not the end of the world; just don't expect concrete for the most part for the short tees. I believe all of the long tees have a concrete pad. There is no restroom unless you use one of the porta potties at the main parking lot (more on that later).

When I came into the main parking lot, I did not particularly like what I saw as far as who was there. Nobody seriously dangerous but not people I wanted to interact with (let's say). So I decided that I was going to look for another place to park. There is a parking lot on the north side of the park that is part of a police station. I don't know how the police feel about non-police people parking in their parking lot, but many of us do. I saw other disc golfers and runners parking there, and I felt better about that lot since right at the police. I used to live in Ann Arbor, so I do know a little something about Detroit...

If you do park in the parking lot near the police station, you are playing holes 7-18 and then 1-6. It's just as pleasant to play this order as it is to play 1-18, I think. The shotgun start from 7 also allows you to warm up on fairly open holes before you have to deal with the more tactical holes (nos. 13, in particular). If you start at no. 1, it's not tremendously difficult (big, mostly open dogleg left), but nos. 2 and 3 are full or partial tunnels. If you go with the police parking lot method, you can use the no. 6 basket as your warm-up basket if nobody is coming down the pike.

The distances given here on DGCR of several of the holes are not correct. You will notice a very small sign in some of the pictures that I took (white on black for the hole number; black on white for the hole distance) where you see the real-deal distances. I'll leave it to the local club to update DGCR with the correct information for every hole.

Mostly open, park style course, with a degree of technicality.

• Variety: Decent - Front 9 is mostly open off the tee, playing to baskets tucked away into woodsy/dense brush, creating a window you need to hit to get to the basket. Where tee shots land can greatly impact the size of that window and/or the angle and line to the basket. On those holes, the farther a drive is, the more important it is to place it, because of the angle/line needed to get to the basket. The back 9 has some more traditional "park style" holes that play to a basket in the open, with a few trees to work around.

Long and short tees on most holes provide a decent range of distances (a couple of holes share a single tee). No holes really call for a specific line off the tee, so you're free to try a wide variety of shots off most tees. A few of the long/short tees really change things up, but most just change the distance, with some longs really stretching the distance out compared to the shorts.

• Elevation: Completely flat.

• Challenge: Reasonable - Skill level is well-suited for beginners to intermediate players. The challenge is avoiding dense brushy woods (as well as distance, if you're playing from the longs). Several holes require you to hit a window, and missing it can cost you a stroke. As open as the course is, the wooded areas are thick with twigs and brush, and not easy to recover from. How severely you're punished for bad shots is more a matter of where you you miss and how. Miss your line and land in the open - you can probably save par. Miss your line and end up the schule, and you'll be scrambling. Windy conditions can help you find trouble, so understanding how to plan for "which miss am I willing to risk?" can help.

In that sense, it's a good intro into "course management," without the tunnels that a truly technical course can impose.

• Equipment: Passable - Front 9 has red Chainstar Pros. Back 9 has Original Chainstars. Natural tees are marked with orange or yellow flags. All tees are flagged to help you find them (see navigation). Blue 5-gallon bucket at each tee have an map of the hole with distances for both tees.

• Aesthetics: Decent -Expect a pleasant walk in a city park. It's fairly peaceful, but it's still in the city, so don't expect that "get away from it all" feel.

• Fun-Factor: Decent - The key here is mitigating risk and avoiding patches of woods. Manage that successfully, and you'll have a good time.

• Routing/Nav: Passable- Getting around for the first time can be tough, especially since the longs and shorts aren't consistently marked with the same color flags. Would have helped had they flagged the longs in one color, and all the shorts another. MOST of the front 9 are yellow for the long, orange for the short. Seemed most of the back 9 were orange for the long and yellow for the short. U-Disc will help you find the longs, but as of this writing, no one's mapped out the shorts on U-Disc. No next tee signs or arrows, and as open as it is, it's not always obvious where to proceed after holing out.

• Terrain: Much of the course plays on bumpy, wallowy, uneven terrain that makes for uneven footing, and difficult runups. You might choose to throw fairway shots from a standstill. Even after mowing, there are sections where grass stays long enough to make it tough to find discs. This course may eliminate rollers from your game plan.

• Tees: Passable - Needs better tees, because the bumpy terrain makes it tough to fully commit. Especially true for the longs, because good footing is essential to good distance. The farther you get down the fairway off the tee, the less likely you are to need a runup on your 2nd shot, which can really be a factor throwing from lumpy fairways. Cement tees said to be coming summer 2022.

• Drainage: Abysmal - Don't even think about playing here for at least a few days after a good rain or after the snow melts, or plan on wearing some sort of rubber shoe. Gore-Tex ain't getting the job done here.

• Limited variety starts to feel repetitive late in the round.

I don't know the inside story on this course, but it feels like a labor of love on a tight budget ...and I don't mean that in a bad way. I get the impression local players did this on their own with the city's approval. The holes do a good job of making the most of the property, and while there's plenty of room for improvement, I do enjoy playing here.

I don't know how often wind is an issue, but can certainly see it presenting a challenge on a course this open.

As things stand now, "Decent/Typical," seems about right, which is what 2.5 means. I can't see this course being more than a 3.5 (i.e. very good), at best. To achieve that, it needs good tees, decent signage, and color-coded arrows on the basket spokes pointing to the next long/short tee (or some other navigational aid). Even with all that, limited variety, lack of elevation, lumpy terrain, and drainage would prevent it from being better than very good.

Reviewer's Note: I highly recommend checking course conditions before making any sort of drive to play here. I walked the entire course in Dec, and several fairways were flooded, as were some walks between holes. I could see and feel the unevenness of the ground as I walked. I played in Jan, with 3" of snow on the ground 15° temps, so standing water and uneven ground weren't an issue.